LUTHER BURBANK 



spiny armor, each a stronger attempt to respond 

 to environment, were so gradual as to be almost 



imperceptible. 



***** 



But those rudimentary, half formed leaves 

 which come forth from every eye of the cactus 

 slab before the thorns or fruits come out those 

 leaves which, as if seeing that they have no useful 

 purpose, as if realizing that they are relics, 

 only, of a bygone day, drop off and die what 

 environment has acted to bring them forth? 



And those two smooth slabs that push out when 

 the tiny seedling has just poked its thorny head 

 above the ground to what environment do they 

 respond? 



How shall we account for this tendency in a 

 plant to jump out of its own surroundings, and 

 out of the surroundings of its parents, and their 

 parents and those before them and to respond 

 to the influences which surrounded an extinct 

 ancestor to hark back to the days when the 

 desert was the moist bottom of an evaporating 

 sea and before the animals came to destroy? 

 ***** 



A group of scientists were chatting with Luther 

 Burbank when a chance remark on heredity led 

 one of them to tell this bear story. 



It seemed, so the story ran, that a baby bear 



[36] 



